I´m asking this because until now this is what I think I have, well the nurse that I talked with today at the hosptal, she made some tests today, allergy test on the arm, allergy blood tests,(results to come) peak flow, how well my blood transport oxygen and lung capacity plus other tests.

The nurse supects that I have: Exercise-Induced Asthma but until now we have to wait for results that I will get in 3 weeks time, I just bought a peak flow meter today and I have to meassure morning and night my peak flow, also i have to do a running test and then meassure my peak flow

Everything started with a bad bad cold in march this year (2010) coghing at night with lungs weezing, totally out of breath I then went to the doctor and she maid a lung function test i think it´s called spirometry test and the results were 95% normal so her answer was: if it gets worse contact me! During a 2 month period it went away the weezing only happened at night.

Sept. another cold and infection in the sinus decked me and the weezing started again at night but now also sometimes in the day, the doctor suscribed me terbasmin an inhaler and it helped against the attacks.Oct. phneumonia the weezing was crazy and the doctor sent to lung specialists which was today.

What I know until now: my numbers for infection were at 67 and should be below 25 (I guess the penicillin didn´t kill it completely), my lung capacity is: 5.68 L the nurse suspected me to be around 4.00 so I blew off the chart, my peak flow is: 550 until now and it should be around 635. Maybe I have a little grass pollen allergy. My lungs start weezing during exercise, I have bike to work 1 km and it´s uphill (max 4%) and I have to hold back otherwise I can´t breathe when I get to work.

The attacks feels like breathing holding your fingers close togehter over your mouth and breathe through the tine spaces between your fingers. Has anyone had similar stories or found out that they have asthma after they started cycling? I have allways been active I started cycling in 1994 but held a pause from cycling for 3 years I´m 37 years old and I never had anything close to the attacks......closest thing has been going hard from the first minute on the bike or running when it freezing cold outside when training in poor shape

I know lots of people who have "exercise induced asthma". Of course it is a lot easier to notice in bicycling because it depends on deep breathing for prolonged periods of time. I have often secretly wondered if they REALLY had asthma, or were just having the same difficulty breathing that we all have when going all-out for a significant period of time. Maybe they just want the inhaler boost. ?

But I have never really had asthma. Last year I did get a nasty cold/virus/whatever that created heavy congestion deep in my lungs. It took about a month to get over it. Cycling would exacerbate it when I went hard, and I would end up coughing heavily and spitting up mucous. If it had taken any longer I would have started visiting doctors, but luckily, I got over it.

sounds similar, the cold I had in march took me about 2-3months to completely recovery, went from waking up every night from lungs weezing for a week to once every 2-3 weeks and also alot of coughinhg and spitting up mucous.

Thanx for the input because I´m doubting if I have asthma because I never had symptoms before and my attacks, I´ve only had when being sick and finally my blood test for infection showed to high numbers.

I haven´t trained for a month and the nurse recommende resting the rest of the month, that sucks!The good thing is that she recommended alot of eating also food with fat to regain strenght and bodyweight so maybe i´m going to pull a Jan Ullrich and a eat a lot of cakes the next month...luckily I only weigh 60 kg and 178 cm so I can handle some extra fat on my body

I got a really bad cool this last Spring. Lungs were full of crap for a good two months. During that time, it really crippled my performance on the bike. Went to the doctor a few weeks in, he provided me some steroids and antibiotics. They didn't really seem to help speed up the recovery process.

as someone who races with Fixed Obstructive Lung Disease, this is not something to mess around with. i apperantly had asthma my whole life and did not realize it. My asthma was in the form of a cough. i never once in my life have had an "asthma attack". 5 years ago i was getting killed in races and was very frustrated because i was training correctly and doing everything right. I was having a lot of trouble breathing and would weeze and cough during super hard efforts. After seeing a lung doctor i was told i have the lungs of a 75 year old with Emphysema. My FEV (what you can blow out) was 63, most people are 90-100 and lung capacity was 87%. so now at 38 i am still racing a lot, but my lung condition is not fixable, which kind of sucks. I have just learned what i can and can not do. I guess it is a good thing i am a good sprinter, because my chance in a break are slim.

i guess my point is cycling does not cause asthma, but can trigger a problem that was already there. I have had the athletic induced asthma conversation with my doctor many times and he strongly believes that there is not such thing, that there are people that have asthma and it is set off by exersize. so something in your environment has set off your asthma. look into what might had changed around you, i bet you will find something.

thanx for reply shill! I´m no doctor so I won´t say what I have and do not have I´ll leave that to experts, the results that we have until so far have shown normal values exept for infection, the peak flow meter now shows 638 and with my height and age it should be 635 and my FEV was 94% I forgot to ask what it was this monday.

The nurse at the hospital recomended after infection in the sinus, it´s a good thing after using a normal nose spray, to use a nose spray with hormones which I bought today (momentasonfurorat). She said when you sleep at night on your back, stuff will drip down in to your lungs apparently the hormones will help.

You cannot make the diagnosis based on any blood test or on peak flow (I am a physician). Peak flow meters are for home use for the patient to monitor their own condition, but are fraught with error and technique problems. Blood tests may suggest some allergic or inflammatory issue, but cannot make the diagnosis at all. You probably need complete spirometry repeated, with flow volume loops and a measurement of FEF25-75 (the forced expiratory flow rate between 25 and 75% of the duration of the breath- an indicator of small airways disease) both pre and post bronchodilator. These are not effort dependent. You may very well have exercise induced asthma, but you should get an accurate diagnosis first. I also have asthma (although do not have symptoms with exercise) and have a very pronounced inflammatory component. If you were still having symptoms during sleep even when other wise well it is most likely that you did not have things under optimal control, and may need a short course of a systemic steroid like prednisone, but one cannot tell this for sure without a complete exam and testing.

Steroids (inhaled or nasal) are certainly in the first line of therapy, as there is a major inflammatory component to reactive airways disease.

See your pulmonologist again! It is surprising that the first set of spirometry measurements did not show anything, but I think that functional testing is an important line of inquiry in this situation.

Thanx dmp! I´m seeing a doctor at the lung clinic the november 30, it was the only time available.

The doctor will go through all the results and I will ask as many questions as I can think of and the nurse told me not take any medicine that day and they will test me again.

About the peak flow meter, Im also aware of that my teqnique sometimes also fail. I´m suposed to make a running test for six minutes and meassure the peak flow after 1-5-10-15-20 minutes and I´m planning on doing it 3 times before the 30th of nov.

I´m also going to ask the doctor to test my blood againg for any inflammatory issue

The biggest problem with peak flow is that it is very effort dependent. For example, if you are actively wheezing, you will often incite a cough with a maximal effort breath, so consciously or not you may limit effort in order to achieve a measurable result. Formal spirometry or plethysmography in a "body box" can eliminate some of these confounding issues to get more accuracy.

I did the 1rst running test yesterday i forgot to meassure right before though but my best peak is 640, usually i´t s better at night or mid day.

Test: run 6 minutes, I kept the pulse between 160-173 maybe it was to high since my max is 184. The last 2 minutes was hard, could hardly take air in. peak flow after 01 minute: 350 (Then i took my inhaler)peak flow after 05 minute: 400peak flow after 10 minute: 440peak flow after 15 minute: 430peak flow after 20 minute: 450

the nose spray with hormones seem to work, I have had 3 nights in a row without night coughing for the first time in 5 weeks

People with a pollen allergy may at first suspect they have a summer cold – but the “cold” lingers on and some people with pollen allergy develop asthma, a serious respiratory condition. While asthma may recur each year during pollen season, it can eventually become chronic. The symptoms of asthma include coughing, wheezing, shortness of breath due to a narrowing of the bronchial passages, and excess mucus production. Asthma can be disabling and can sometimes be fatal. People with pollen allergies often develop sensitivities to other troublemakers that are present all year as dust and mold. Year-round allergens like these cause perennial allergic rhinitis, as distinguished from seasonal allergic rhinitis, or hay fever.

Last edited by danneva on Tue Nov 23, 2010 6:07 am, edited 1 time in total.

I was diagnosed with exercise induced bronchiospasm five years after I'd come back to cycling (so it was in my late 40s). When the airways close down it's like trying to breathe through a straw, accompanied by a lot of wheezing. My symptoms only happen when it's cold and wet, and only at elevated levels of effort. But it's been bad enough that people on training rides and in races were asking if I was ok.

I had some tests done that showed that 1) my lungs aren't very good and 2) that even when I'm not wheezing my breathing is better with some Albuterol. I'm told that's the definitive test- if you don't suffer from asthma then the Albuterol does nothing for your breathing.

I also suffer from hayfever, but that's different and actually goes away when I am riding. But a lifetime of hayfever may have made the asthma worse.

I'm told that's the definitive test- if you don't suffer from asthma then the Albuterol does nothing for your breathing.

Actually that is not true. If one has a primarily bronchoreactive component to their asthma (spasm of the smooth muscle of the airways) that is often the case. But if one has more inflammatory airway reactivity you may not have a good response to albuterol and other beta agonists.

Today I was at the hospital for further tests and to talk with a doctor. First a nurse did some tests:spirometry,EKG, and some thing inhale and exhale to see if i have asthma but the thing is a bit uncertain so we made furthers test but before that I talked with a doctor for about 10 minutes, she took her time to ask a lot of questions, luckily the nurses had the time to do a spirometry test again but this time with me inhaling medicine to provoke the airwairs and the wait about a minute repeated 8 times, by the 3rd spirometry test I had dropped 16% in peformance and more tha 15% drop in performance should indicate astma, the nurse told me that she had never seen it drop so fast so the conclusion is that I have asthma based on all the tests, she said that there was no need to go further on with the last 5 inhalations of the medicine.

I went directly to farmacy and took my new medicine:prednisolone 37½ mg per day for 2 weeks and seretide inhalator 500 microgram 2 times a day. ½ an hour later i went on a bike to the supermarket about 1½ km away as fast as i could and return in same speed and I felt nothing, not the tiniest weezing.

In 2 weeks i have to return to the hospital to make a follow up on how things are going.

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